Jeez! what’s up with you people living in a Nerf[sup]tm[/sup] world.
This isn’t “bad” parenting. This looks more to me likeFather/Son bonding.
I remember my Dad taking me to see horror flicks. 90% of the reason I liked going so much is because it was something special me and my dad did alone. In other words: Mom and Sis weren’t allowed to come. (Not that they wanted too)
I know it’s been a while since I’ve been to a movie theater, but inescapable? What? Two legs, right? Everyone got in there somehow. Unless you’re trying to say that a parent, after misjudging their child’s ability to handle something (honest mistake), would actually force a child to remain in the theater until the end credits. That’s when an honest mistake becomes something awful, and any parent who would do that really sucks.
There’s quite a difference between giving into, “Oh, come on, Mom. Please? I’m EIGHT. I’ll be okay, I promise! It’s just <insert questionable movie title here, with great vocal emphasis and perhaps even a face, possibly feigning disinterest, but more likely telling you that this movie is child’s play, he’s this big guy now, and you are being totally unfair>”, realizing your mistake and getting little Billy out of there right now (what a reasonable person would most likely do) and realizing your mistake but pointing out that it cost you $22 when you add in the price of Mike and Ikes and, hey big man, you said you’d be fine, so now you’re going to sit here and watch this movie, and you’re going to like it! And, really, who would do that?
I think it depends on the parent(s), the movie and the kid, as well as the direction of the wind and then probably some lunar… stuff. Oh, and the price of tea. In Zimbabwe though, not China.
For example, the people in this thread who are all, “Yeah, who cares? My mom was watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre while I was being delivered! We’ve watched it on every birthday since!” and stuff are all okay, probably mostly normal, well adjusted adults. I have extremely early memories of horror movies (I saw “It” before I was 10) and I’m okay.
But then you have kids who are terrified of characters from honest to bob KID’S MOVIES (the opening scene from Finding Nemo was quite traumatic the night my sister saw it in the theater, lots of crying children, I guess). My nephew’s afraid of Shrek. He loved the first movie when it came out on DVD, but somehow Shrek became this horrible monster since then, and he runs from the sight of even the movie case.
I’m sure I’ll be in this situation eventually, probably more than once, and I can say right now that I will almost certainly trust my child’s judgement provided he knows enough about the movie to make an informed decision. I don’t see why not. After all, if he likes it, hey, cool movie. If not, oh well. It’s not like movie theaters are inescapable or anything.
I’m another one who saw plenty of honest-to-god slasher movies (which the Blade movies are not) when I was young – the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series was a particular favorite. As an adult, I only go on one, maybe two kill-crazy rampages a year. I turned out fine.
Seriously, though, I do think it all depends on the particular child. Some are smart and mature enough to understand that watching violence can be good for a lark, though partaking in violence is unacceptable. Some are not. Some will be traumatized by graphic violence, others will not. If you’ve only ever known the latter, it wouldn’t be surprising if you thought that all children would be harmed by seeing Blade or something worse.
I’ve got two little brothers, currently 10 and 8 years old. The older one has always been unusually mature (not to mention very intelligent), and I would have no problem taking him to see Blade, neither now nor two years ago. The younger one has always been unusally immature and sensitive, and I would not take him to such a movie.
In the absemce of any familiarity with the child the OP describes, I would give the father the benefit of the doubt in this case . . . except for the part about talking during the movie. Some people just need to be smacked.
Holy fuck, someone notify CPS, I’m totally unfit!
Okay, be honest now: You’re not really that stupid, are you? Seriously, comparing the judgement of a toddler with regards to chocolate consumption to the judgement of an 8 year old boy with regards to his movie choices? Quite a leap there, don’t you think?
So, since children are obviously too dumb to trust in these serious matters, how exactly do you decide PG-13 is okay? Ooh, don’t tell me; the kid gets to go when he’s 13, right? And what happens when your teenager, raised in a GOOD home by the GOOD parents, is too emotionally retarded (or maybe he’s just really sensitive and stuff) to handle the movie even then? Are you still a GOOD parent who made an honest mistake by letting him go, or are you a bad parent for not having the foresight to know exactly how your child would respond to this movie?
I must say, I love that you’ll trust the judgement of a panel of people you’ve never even met to tell you which movies are appropriate for your child and which are not, based solely on the child’s age, but you won’t trust your own child, someone you’ve known forever and who, with the help of an actual good parent, would be way more qualified to make such a decision, even as just a stupid 8 year old.
That’s bleak.
If that’s “GOOD” parenting, you can put me on the “BAD” side a hundred times.
Bah. I don’t think the best way to avoid night terrors is to simply restrict entertainment – I think it’s probably mostly coddled children that are suceptible to the screaming meemies.
It isn’t hard to teach kids that movies are just make-believe. Last year I wanted to take my best friend and her daughter to see Finding Nemo, but my friend had reservations about the intensity of it. Her daughter was four, had never seen a movie, and she knew that Finding Nemo had some scary scenes with sharks, etc. (I don’t mean to draw an equivalence between Finding Nemo, and Blade, of course, but bear with me here…) To make sure that she was emotionally and intellectually prepared for the cinematic experience, I spent a couple of hours, split between the day before the movie and the actual day. First, we played “flip book.” (At her house.) She learned the magic of apparent motion. I made some simple animated stick people for her, and encouraged her to suggest actions. We did that until she got bored. The next day, at my house, she got to see a reel of film, and grok it was kind of like the flip book. Lots of pictures, each a little different. We cut it up and made slides, and she learned how a little tiny picture could be made to appear big. (It was a trailer reel for Jennifer Lopez’ Enough, so I didn’t feel too bad about cutting it up. :D)
Then she got to play with a Fisher Price film viewer – she saw Goofy’s Glider, The The Lonesome Ghosts, Flight Into Space, and Mickey’s Trailer Ride. She saw that it was just a little strip of film in each cartridge, and how you could make it move as fast or slow as you like. Now, she knew we were going to see Finding Nemo. We talked about how it was made just the same – lots of little pictures on a strip, except that the movie theatre was going to make it look way bigger, and it would be dark. (I showed her with the slide projector how moving farther back made the picture bigger.) Then we talked about voices. We played at making up things for Mickey and Goofy to say in the haunted house. I asked her if she wanted to see the man who was going to make up the voice of Nemo’s daddy in the movie we were going to see, and showed her a little bit of an interview on Late Night With David Letterman, where Albert Brooks was promoting Nemo, plus a clip from the movie. You see where this is leading?
She was four, but when we went into that theatre, she totally understood that what we were going to see was a fancy kind of pretend. We looked at the poster and talked about the shark with the big teeth. She was armed with a magic talisman – one frame of film, as a reminder that all the big stuff we were going to see was just light shining through an itsy-bitsy piece of plastic. Neat! “It’s going to be loud. But we won’t be scared, right?” “Right!” “It’s going to be dark, but we won’t be scared, right?” “Right!”
She sat open-mouthed through the whole picture. (Well, there were a few slow parts where she fidgeted a bit.) But the thing is, Big Scary Bruce did not faze her one bit – because she knew he wasn’t real.
If a four-year-old can grasp that and stare down the image of a twenty-foot-high shark because she knows it’s “just a movie,” there’s no qualitive difference between that and an eight-year-old taking in a gory vampire movie – assuming the kid understands that there are no such things as vampires, and he’s just looking at actors playing dress up, with fifty gallons of fake blood on the side.
And you don’t have to go to the obsessive lengths that I did to put a basic concept like that across – especially if the kid is a couple of years older than four. Night terrors don’t come from seeing a movie – night terrors come from not understanding that there are no boogeymen. If a kid isn’t reassured of that, he doesn’t need Wesley Snipes with prosthetic orthodontia to put the fear in him – he’ll sit in bed and tremble at shadows.
The only crappy parenting the OP’s guy displayed was not teaching his kid how to behave in public.
For those of you implying the movie is somehow bad for the kid, can you explain why you think that way?
I’m remembering the movies I got to see in theatres when I was seven or eight. Lessee, that’s roughly 1989-1991. I’m pretty sure I got to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I know I got to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Okay, that was 1988.) At about this age, Mom had no problem with Raiders of the Lost Ark. She wouldn’t let me watch Temple of Doom because the Thugee ceremony was too intense for her (so at least she had watched the movie.) Well, that’s all I can come up with, but that’s because we didn’t go to the movies a lot. Plus, we had a VCR. So instead, I would watch movies, either bought or taped off the TV. It would probably be better for a parent to screen a movie like Blade 3 first, but if it’s anything like the first Blade movie (which I don’t intend to find out), I agree that it’s probably cartoony violence.
I have a 10 year old son (he just turned 10 in October) who has seen both Blade and Blade II. He has been told that if he does well on his report card then he can choose a movie for us to go enjoy. Well, guess what he chose.
We are going to go see Blade Trinity this weekend. Anyone who thinks that they know my son and what is appropriate for him, better than I do, is invited to fuck right the hell off.
My son knows that vampires are not real. When we watch the films and the fighting starts…the first vampire that gets turned to ash, he turns to me and whispers, “That is an awsome effect”. He knows that those effects are done with computers. He knows it is not real. He is able to sit there and enjoy the movie because he is old enough to know what is real and what isn’t.
He has known this and understood this for a very long time. We have never had a problem with nightmares.
I saw the original Blade, which was much bloodier and violent than III next to a 4 or 5 year old. That was just weird. Of course, the kid was quiet through the movie, unlike the 2 year olds at the last two movies I’ve seen, Blade III and National Treasure. I hate the freaking lazy parents who won’t take their crying/complaining kids outside, just hushing them louder than the kid. Those people should be forced to see *From Justin to Kelly * for 48 hours straight.
On the other hand, the movie sucked.
In a related question, why would it be bad to show an eight year old some hardcore porn? Is it really going to affect them in a negative way? Or how about some of those be-headings in Iraq? Maybe I can pull some off the internet and show them to my neices and nephews? They’re not going to turn into murderers just cause they see that are they?
Kids need to decide for themselves what they can handle. For instance, If I ask my 7-year old nephew if he’d like to see “Se7en” with Brad Pitt he should be able to tell me “No thank you sir, I don’t believe at my age that I’m at the intellectual level to understand the adult themes in that type of film.”
Kids know their limits. Just put em in front of a screen with whatever you want. If they don’t show a reaction, they’re just fine.
A few things:
My problem was that I didn’t think the movie was appropriate for that age group. However I did not confront the father about it. **I would not presume to know the child in question or the man’s ability or lack there of of parenting. ** Like I stated, my opinion on how appropriate the movie is, ie. violence, language and sexual content.
I thought that the behavior of the father, talking, bleching, etc in a theater was an example of boorish behavior to his kid. Even after I turned around and put my finger to my lips and asked the boy to keep it down, the kid chose to ignore my request as did the father.
I had already moved to these seats due to a couple of adults chatting way like they hadn’t seen each other for years, even after I asked them if they were going to talk during the whole movie. Actually they didn’t talk they ended up necking LOUDLY, so that when I moved.
Oh yeah FWIW, I am a female 
This is rich. Now you have to justify it if you want to pit some complete stranger.
But then, so did the characters! badum-ching
Oh shit, my daughter and I watched part of the original Blade yesterday on cable. She’s nine, so I guess I’m guilty of bad parenting. :rolleyes:
My dad took us to see Hellraiser when that came out, I don’t know how old I was, but we loved it and it scared the crap out of us. But, it was all in good fun, and dad still likes to say, “We have such sights to show you!” Good times.
Are you, by chance, implying that the parents are a good judge of their childrens limits? Hmm, an interesting thought, indeed.
This makes you far more reasonable than some others who’ve posted here.
I agree whole-heartedly that this deserves a pitting.
FWIW,
Oh, and Hampshire, that should have been “…a better judge…” As in, better than the children themselves. As in, y’know, the parent who allowed the kid to see it in the first place.
I believe Hampshire is being facetious. Read the rest of the post.
Looks that way doesn’t it? 
You did end up working in the sex industry as an exotic dancer. So maybe it affect you negatively.